


Seek Shelter

by tielan



Category: X-Men Movie
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-09
Updated: 2005-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They might be mutants, but they're still only children on the run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seek Shelter

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2006 X-Men Ficathon, to the prompt of "Peter and the children, what were they doing during X2?"

Piotr was already fretting when they reached the end of the tunnels.

“It’s half a mile from here to the first stop,” Danielle Moonstar reported as the group paused to take stock of everything. “The professor said there’s a safehouse on the outskirts of the town, held by an old lady who’ll help us.”

“You sound pretty sure of that.” Jubilation Lee shushed one of the children who’d begun to cry. Without a word, Kitty stepped in and began speaking softly to the little girl, quieting her sobs.

Danielle regarded the Asian girl with undisguised annoyance. “Unlike you, I was paying attention when Jean detailed the escape routes for a situation like this.”

“I was paying attention!”

The two girls were on the verge of starting an argument. Piotr opened his mouth to say something and was pre-empted by someone else.

“Oh shush, the both of you,” interrupted Sam Guthrie from a few feet away. He spoke with a tolerant authority, the oldest of a clan of children back home. “There’s more things to worry about than who paid attention in class. Although, it would probably help if more of us had.” He glanced at Piotr. “Half a mile isn’t too bad, right?”

“Maybe not for the Kentucky hayseed,” Jubilee retorted. “But these kids are young - most of them aren’t used to walking.”

Danielle snorted. “Are we talking about the kids or about you?”

“Dani...” Sam warned. “That’s enough.” The young man had assumed the kind of leadership that should technically have gone to Piotr as the oldest among them. Except that Piotr had no desire to be the leader. He felt no need to be in charge, although he would take the lead if he had to.

Logan had given him charge of the children, told him to take them to safety, while he went looking for the Professor, Jean, and Ororo with the three oldest of the children. Others had begged to go, but Logan was in no mood to take tagalongs and said as much.

Another man might have resented being delegated to ‘babysitter’. Piotr did not. Someone needed to protect the little ones and someone needed to find where the senior personnel of the school had gone.

“We will go slowly,” he said at last. “Those who can will carry those who cannot themselves walk.” He looked around him, caught sight of young Pietro Maximoff, his silver-blonde hair gleaming in the night. “Pietro, will you scout ahead of us? Return if you see trouble.”

The young boy nodded and sped off into the night, nothing more than a faint silvery blur as he moved faster than the eye could track.

“Dani?”

“I can scout ahead as well.” Born of an American Indian tribe, Danielle had spent her childhood on a ‘reservation’ but had learned some of the more traditional skills of her people. Piotr was not well-versed in such things, but the impression he’d received was that this was unusual. Nevertheless, he was grateful for it. She was older, her knowledge and level-headed thinking would be of more use to them than Pietro’s hot-headedness.

“Thank you,” he said. A moment later, she vanished into the night.

Piotr looked around at the twenty or so childen, ranging from ages sixteen to eight. All of them mutants, all of them hated, all of them hunted.

At five, Piotr had not understood why their neighbours were taken away in the night. At twenty, he understood far better why people might be hated and feared for not only what they said, but for what they were.

Understanding the motivations made the actions no less terrible.

“We shall move on,” he said, meeting the eyes of the older children, while the younger children shifted restlessly. “There will be rest at the end of our journey.”

They looked back at him, not out of distrust, but because they were afraid. They were afraid of the dark and the night, of the uncertainty of where they went, of the kind of hatred that would cause grown men to hunt down children for a genetic ability that was not of their choosing. Piotr understood their fears, only too well - but they were in his care and he must lead them.

And although there were some whimpers and some protests, they were voiced softly and soon quieted.

They moved out, a mass of footsteps pattering across the leaf mulch. Too much noise, but there was nothing he could do about that.

In the lead, Sam Guthrie walked with one of the children who possessed night vision. The girl was perhaps eleven or twelve, and clung tightly to Sam’s hand as she pointed the directions they should go and kept them from falling along the way.

The going was slow.

“Pity we don’t have a teleporter,” Kitty Pryde murmured as she drew alongside him.

Piotr found a smile drawn out of him in spite of the grimness of their situation. “Our luck does not that way tend.”

“If you believe in luck,” she said, her voice light as her footsteps. The children she herded along moved slowly, and Piotr walked alongside them, readjusting the unconscious child he held in his arms. After a few moments, he caught her gaze upon him. “You’re fretting.”

Her scrutiny was not a little unnerving. “Do I not have reason to fret?”

“No,” she said. “I mean, we’re in trouble. But we’re mutants,” and now her voice took on the faint lilt of laughter. “When are we not in trouble?”

Her joking question was answered only too soon.

They had one warning cry from Sam. “Attack! Get the children behind!”

Piotr saw the shadows running through the woods, and quickly thrust the child he was carrying into Kitty’s arms. “Take him.”

“Piotr!”

He ignored her frantic call, already transmuting to the solid titanium that was his ability and skill as a mutant.

The children knew what to do. Even before they had left the safety of the tunnels, Piotr had spoken with them, telling them that they might need to go very quiet and hide together. If that moment came, then he and the older children would fight, but the younger ones must collect together and remain still.

Gunfire ricocheted off him, leaving no mark on his body as he strode into the fray. The first man was dispatched with a light punch to the jaw that reeled him back into the second, and the third hit his head against a tree-trunk as Piotr swung at him and he sought to evade.

Piotr was not a violent man by nature.

However, tonight he had been roused from his bed by gunfire and been faced with men sent with guns and armour to capture or kill children who were different.

Children.

Anger gave his blows more force than he might have otherwise shown, and if he beat no man to death, neither did he pull his blows. The time for gentleness, for consideration and care had passed. He was responsible for these littles and these men would not get a single one.

He saw the fiery blast that lifted one man off his feet and slammed him into another; glimpsed the sparkling brilliance of fireworks that blinded men and caused them to cry out in primal fear of fire. Sparks of gleaming scarlet burst in the air around the men, and tree limbs fell upon them as they stumbled over sudden rocks and put their foot in unexpected holes.

It was easy to tell mutant from foe - even in the darkness. The men were the enemy, but for Piotr, who remained in his titanium state and continued to work his way through these men.

Dimly, as he threw down another man, Piotr heard Kitty’s cry. “They got Ned!”

He looked around, seeking the missing child, and heard the high-pitched scream of a child being carried away against his will. Too far across the battlefield for him to be able to plunge through. “Cannonball!”

“I’m on it!” Sam Guthrie took his codename from the kinetic blast of energy that turned his lower half into fiery propulsion, and which transformed him into an invulnerable ‘speeding bullet’. He was more force than finesse at sixteen, but that wasn’t unusual in a young man.

“Stop! Or the girl gets it!”

The cry rang out through the woods, and Piotr caught sight of a wide-eyed Jubilation, her hands crawling with fireworks, and the dark shadows of a gun at her temple.

“Hurry up, mutie trash! They don’t care how many of you we take alive as long as there’s none of you left running around endangering normal folk.”

Piotr did not understand the full meaning of ‘mutie trash’, but there was no mistaking the tone of voice in which the man spoke. This man would kill a child, merely for being a ‘mutant’ and never think he’d done the wrong thing.

Against such vileness, Piotr could not fight.

“Children...”

He got no further than that first word when something blurred through the glade. The gun was gone from Jubilee’s head, and the man was already doubled up when one of Wanda’s hex-bolts struck him. The ghostly blur siezed weapons and struck men down, leaving them prone for the others to finish off. There were cries of alarm as the soldiers reached for their guns but didn’t find them, and more shouts when the adolescents hit their attackers with all the force of which they were capable with their mutant gifts.

“Backup! Team Seven calling for backu--” The man’s voice died as something pink flew out of the darkness and speared into his head. It dissolved within a second, and he collapsed on the ground, his eyes rolling back into his head.

Another psychic arrow flew through the air with eerie accuracy, ‘short-circuiting’ the mind of another attacker, even as the other children dealt with the men accordingly.

A minute later, it was over.

“Filth,” Danielle Moonstar said as she stepped over the body of the leader and lifted up his eyelids to be sure he was unconscious. “Jubilee?”

“Totally freaked, but okay. Pietro?”

The silver blur paused by a tree. “Yeah?”

“Good timing.”

The boy grinned as  Piotr turned, taking swift inventory. “Everyone else?”

“I’m good.”

“Fine.”

“All okay here.”

“A little shaky,” confessed Wanda Maximoff.

“Kitty?”

There was a second’s pause. “We’re okay. What about Cannonball and Ned?”

“We’re here...” The flaming comet of the young man’s mutation sped through the darkness, to hover before Piotr for a second. Then it sparked out, and Sam was standing on the ground, holding one of the children in his arms.

“Ned?”

“’m fine,” said the small voice. “I’m sorry I let go of Nina’s hand, but there were guns and scary things and I thought that I saw something...”

The air was suddenly full of small voices, clamouring about their fears and worries and weariness. Piotr glanced around but their enemies seemed to be down - at least for the moment. Still, it took longer to shush the children than he liked and they were very conspicuous amidst the unconscious bodies of the men who’d been sent to capture them.

“We’d better move on,” Dani said, echoing Piotr’s thoughts as she cast a swift, assessing glance through the woods. “We have to get to the safe house before dawn.”

Mention of the safehouse fired them up again. “How far is it?” Jubilee asked. “Are we there yet?”

“At least another twenty minutes,” Pietro Maximoff said, coming up and brandishing a firearm in the faces of the group. “Do we want to take their guns?”

“No,” Piotr said immediately. When the others looked surprised at his vehemence, he explained, “They are unnecessary. We fought these men without weapons and we are still standing. Leave them their weapons. They can do nothing to us.”

He was surprised to realise just how much he meant that. And even more surprised when Kitty added, “We fought together. That makes us strong.”

“Just like the Professor said,” Dani said.

“Just like the X-men,” said Sam, growing excited.

“Okay, guys,” Jubilee interrupted, “if this gets any more cloying, I think I’m gonna puke. Can we move on already?”

They collected up the children and moved out, more wary than before, and with Dani scouting ahead again. This time, they moved faster, very much awake after the last encounter, and still not completely sure of what they might find at the end of this journey.

“There’s definitely a house there,” Pietro reported when they were well on their way. “It seems to be occupied, but it’s just...spooky.”

“People think the school is spooky, though,” his sister Wanda chimed in, softly.

The young teenager looked more solemn than was usual for him. “Yes, but this house is _very_ spooky.”

He came under some teasing for his description of the house, but he kept to his opinion, right up until they turned into the lane that led to the house.

Piotr jiggled the child in his arms, pausing as he took stock of the four levels of house, the Victorian roof, the curlicues of iron railing that were visible at every junction, and the cracked, faded paint.

“Whoa,” Jubilee said.

“Told you,” Pietro muttered.

They paused at the end of the lane. “Let Dani and me go in first,” Sam said. “We look pretty harmless.”

“‘Pretty harmless’ is the phrase,” Jubilee muttered.

“I’ll go,” Kitty said. “If we get in trouble, I can phase us out of there without any injury.”

“But that’ll give you away as mutants,” Wanda protested.

“Kitty and Sam will go,” Piotr said. No need for arguing, and Kitty had a point.

The others scuttled behind bushes as the pair walked up the long driveway, hand in hand to preserve the image of just a couple of teenagers. They paused on the verandah, conferring in tense voices, then lifted a hand to knock on the door.

From his vantage point, Piotr saw the door open before Sam’s hand had gotten high enough to knock. A moment later, Kitty came back down to the gate. “Piotr? It’s okay.”

“You’re sure?”

The young woman nodded, her eyes large and wondering. “She’s a mutant too. She knows our names and everything! Who we’ve got with us, what happened tonight. She’s a clairvoyant.”

They made their way up to the front door, the children sighing and crying with relief.

Piotr paused at the door, eye to eye with the woman who was giving them shelter. “Madam...”

“You are welcome, Piotr Illyich Rasputin,” she said with a gleam in faded blue eyes. “I cannot succour you for long, but you are safe here for tonight. I am Irene Adler.”

He didn’t ask how she knew his name. He didn’t question her statement that they were safe for the night. But he stumbled into the house with the weariness of a man who has carried a heavy burden a long way and only now found relief.

Kitty touched his hand as he passed her in the hallway, and her smile was slow and sweet as they walked out of the cold night and into the warmth of a room with a fire and chairs.

Safety, security, and rest.

If only for the moment.

\- **fin** -

**Author's Note:**

> I ended up making a small mistake - Jubilee isn't with the escapees; she gets captured. But I didn't realise this until after the story was submitted.
> 
> I know that Pietro and Wanda Maximoff are technically the children of Magneto according to comic book canon. However, in the first movie, Pietro was shown at the Mansion, playing with the other children in a basketball game. So I'm going with either 'they're not Mag's children' or 'Mags doesn't know about them'. Which might be another story plot entirely.
> 
> Some characters may have taken on their comic-book incarnation, and since it's been a while since I read the comics, I'm not so sure about the validity of how I've described them. Things change fast in the comic book world.


End file.
